Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert represents the 1st congressional district of Texas in the House of Representatives. That district includes the town of Center, Texas. If you look for Center at the center of Texas, however, you’ll be looking in the wrong place. Center is the kind of place that’s actually pretty far from Center, even for Texas. Representative Gohmert’s district is on the eastern edge of Texas, in the rural backwater territory across the Louisiana border from Shreveport, where corruption is king. It’s nobody’s destination, and it isn’t even on the way to anyplace.
In other words, Louie Gohmert is the Representative of Texas wahoos, and boy does he act like it.
About six months ago, Congressman Gohmert got his dander up about people who try to resist the will f the big oil corporations of Texas. Nothing bothers Gohmert more than when someone says no to big Texas oil.
You see, some of those big Texas oil companies got it into their heads to go marching off into some other state and drill for oil on public lands, in wildlife sanctuaries, even if they weren’t wanted by the local people. So, some members of Congress spoke out and tried to defend their home districts from the Texas oil onslaught.
That got Louie Gohmert spitting mad, so he had his aides sit down and write a piece of legislation that would forbid states from importing any gasoline at all if they didn’t give in to the drilling demands of the Texas oil companies. Under Gohmert’s proposed law, if the people Missouri had a piece of wilderness where they didn’t want oil drilling, and Texas oil companies came and demanded oil drilling rights, the people of Missouri have to agree to the demands of Texas, or else forfeit the right to get any gasoline from outside its borders.
Gohmert’s bill, H.R.4893, would have created a system of economic sanctions within the United States, from one state against another, and all for the benefit of big oil corporations in states like Texas. Gohmert’s proposed law would have crushed any state that defied the will of the oil giants of Texas. Louie Gohmert’s legislation would have triggered a new civil war in the United States of America, this one a war over oil.
That was six months ago, and Louie Gohmert thought he would make a big wave in the congressional pond, threatening other members of the House with the weight of big Texas oil. Gohmert got it wrong, thank goodness. In all these months, Gohmert hasn’t been able to convince even one other member of Congress to cosponsor his kooky little bill - not even any other Republicans have signed on.
Nowadays, thanks to his little big oil tantrum, when Louie Gohmert comes walking through the halls of Congress, people tend to avert their eyes or just walk the other way, hoping that Gohmert doesn’t try to talk to them. Congressman Gohmert doesn’t seem to mind, though. He’s Representative of the Wahoos of East Texas, and that seems to be enough for him.
